


Fluff Pieces

by RedPen (GardenVatiety)



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: F/M, Feel-good, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Police Partners, Police Procedural
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2018-10-16 12:56:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10571760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GardenVatiety/pseuds/RedPen
Summary: Shorts, one-shots and prompts that are unconnected with other AUs. Prepare for a light-hearted, feel-good look at the everyday lives of our beloved rabbit and fox in blue.





	1. Old Fox, New Tricks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi! So, this was floating around in my design document; it was going to be a series based off one-word prompts, and the first one was 'computer'. I wrote it, liked it, walked away, came back, looked at it again, hated it, and then it sat around gathering dust until I had the idea to write 'Of Salt and Steel'. Now that I look at it again, it does have its charm; more importantly, the audience is supposed to be the judge of that. Also, given that updates to my main works might be a bit scattered, it seemed unfair to hoard other stuff for no reason. If people like this kind of stuff then I'll keep it up, mostly to decompress when I cant think about pirates anymore; it's like vacation from writing about animals shooting and stabbing each other!

 

The ZPD headquarters was easily the most eye-catching building in downtown Zootopia; a colossal slab-like structure of unpolished ocher stone standing like an ugly sentinel over the central line that ran through the district. It wasn’t the most hideous building in Zootopia, but it stunk of uninspired, committee-approved blandness. It’s sole defining feature, the 7 points that stuck skyward out of its main entrance, and was _supposed_ to put one in mind of the points of a crown but gave the uncharitable observer the impression of a raised middle-finger, did little to rescue it from its fate.

Worse yet, whichever civil engineer had designed and built the place had faced it westward, so officers starting their shifts in the morning were blinded by the rising sun and assaulted a second time in the afternoon when it set.

This placement, however, did net at least one benefit; the late afternoon sun cast a spectacular glow through the ZPD’s glass foyer, saturating everything in beautiful golden light.

It was through this glimmer that Judy was walking now with an armful of completed records destined for filing, smiling and chatting with the officers coming and going. 4 o’clock, the hour before the end of her typical duty shift, had never really been her favourite part of the day, pretty as it was. Once her day as an officer ended, it was home on the Zootopia express, and then a struggle to find enough menial chores to fill the gap before bed. This was made somewhat difficult given that her apartment was a single room, and many of its stains were beyond the power of even the most caustic solvents to remove. It might have seemed sad, but her job was her life. It was what she enjoyed. She wasn’t a paint-your-fingernails, take-a-lavender-bath sort of bunny. She liked walking her beat. She liked busting criminals.

That said, there was a little change in her lately. Come end of day there was a still a spring in her step, beyond the natural springiness contributed by rabbit genetics. There was a genuine smile on her lips. It didn’t take a genius to deduce what was keeping her in such an up-beat mood.

 

\----------

 

Judy bounced down the stairs and pushed the door to Records open with her rump, careful not to jostle her stack of files. Then she crossed the room and hefted them onto the room’s solitary desk. A second later, the bespectacled face of the ZPD’s record’s clerk, Rupert, peered over the top.

“Afternoon, Hopps,” he goat mumbled, removing his glasses to wipe away a smudge with the corner of his coat. “What have you got for me? More files? That’s spectacular. I can’t get enough of these.”

“Rupert,” she returned with a pleasant smile. “I’m glad you found your life’s calling down here.”

“Definitely. Sure. How’s that new partner of yours working out?”

Judy’s smile widened just a whisker. “Nick’s doing great, Rupert. It is _so_ much nicer to have a permanent partner out there. Someone to watch your back, to chat with when the action slows down. It really makes the job. And he seems to be having a ball with it as well.”

“Good. Perfect,” Rupert said with a smile. There was a brief silence. “Well, I’m going to go up to his desk in a moment and bludgeon him with this paperweight, so I hope you haven’t grown too attached.”

Judy’s smile didn’t go anywhere. One eyebrow, however, did suddenly develop a twitch. “Ok. And…why would that be?”

The goat disappeared for a moment, returning with a sheet of paper which he thumped down on the desk. “This is why.”

Judy picked it up. It was a piece of ruled loose leaf, on which someone had scrawled, “I, Nicholas Wild, apprehended a filthy, lowlife criminal ferret today. Called Gavin, was selling knock-off designer merchandise. Hopps helped. Everything went well, all things considered.” Under this were was a curly signature, a date, and a rough sketch of a fox and rabbit in uniforms giving the thumbs up. One could possibly guess it was supposed to be an arrest report.

Rupert fixed her with a gaze. “I think the one with the two sausages protruding from its head is supposed to be you.”

Judy was still smiling. Her eyebrow twitch intensified. “Did he say anything when he dropped this off?”

“No, he did not,” the goat drawled, “so I’m speculating that your partner has either not been shown the procedure, doesn’t have a computer, or is gravely mentally handicapped.” He paused, raising a long-suffering brow. “Or all three.”

“Let me talk to him,” Judy said, and disappeared up the stairs, the sheet of paper hanging form her paw, a sigh putting a dent in that otherwise near-permanent smile.

“Swell. Fine,” muttered Rupert, rolling his eyes as he turned back to his work.

 

\----------

 

This wasn’t really like Nick, Judy thought as she headed up the stairs to the north-wing cubicles. Yes, he was sarcastic and evasive, but the ordeal of his six-month stint at the academy had also proven him to be excellent police material. His results had been almost as a good as Hopps’s; better is some areas, even. He was fast on his feet. He had remarkable stamina. His accuracy with the tranq-rifle was scary. The running joke seemed to be that soon the precinct would be awash in rabbit and fox officers, since they seemed so naturally suited to the demands of policing; that soon the city would be drowning in a sea of sardonic wit and adorable cotton-fluff. Where this uncharacteristic slip had come from was hard to place. He was only three weeks into the job, admittedly, and you didn’t learn _everything_ at the academy. But you certainly learned a healthy respect for procedure, and if you didn’t you got rinsed and washed out the other end. Something had to be wrong.

At the very least, Nick had to be put right on how to draw a bunny. His quick hieroglyph was…what was it? It looked like a helicopter with botulism poisoning to her.

The north-wing was still a buzz of telephones and typing, of puckered faces trying desperately to finish off paperwork while drinking coffee that had gone cold. Nick’s cubicle was at the far end of the room, and she put on a disarming smile before coming around the corner to greet him. “Hey, partner. Just thought I’d pop in and see how you were…getting on…with the…” Her voice faltered when she spotted his in-tray, a stack of documents that was almost the size of Judy herself. Nick, hunched over his desk and holding his head in his paws, shot her a look of mild panic.

“Oh, hey Fluff,” he started, turning around in his chair. Somehow, over the course of the day, Nick had become distressingly rumpled, like he’d just woken up from an all-night party. His uniform was creased, his sleeves were rolled to different lengths, and his tie had come unlooped at some point, probably at the same time he’d unbuttoned his collar to let some air in. “I haven’t got a lot of time to chat, sorry. Got, uh, paperwork due. Quite a lot of paperwork…”

“You’ve got that right,” she returned, staring up at tower of forms. “If that fell on me it would flatten me out, Nick. I don’t think it would be safe to lift it all under our workplace safety codes…”

“Hah. Yeah. It seems to just grow and grow. Every time I look back it’s swollen by a handful of pages. At the rate I’m going I’ll have the whole tree it came from reassembled by tomorrow.” He chuckled, but there was a nervousness to it, and the sound died away quickly. “I think I’m in a little over my head.”

“Nick, the guy down in records showed me your arrest report,” July said quietly, placing the page she’d bought up on his desk. “You know all these forms are available on the ZPD’s drive, don’t you? Didn’t they cover this during your orientation?”

“They probably did,” Nick conceded, his shoulders slumped in defeat. “That’s not the problem I’ve got. It’s that I can’t use” - he rolled back his chair, waving an accusing paw at his computer – “ _this_ damned thing!”

“The computer?” Judy asked, fixing him with a quizzical stare, then breaking down into a bout of laughter. “Come off it Nick. You can’t put your paperwork off for ever. You’re going to have to…”

Her voice trailed off, and the smile as well, when she saw the look of hurt and irritation that shadowed his features. “Nick, I’m sorry…you’re being serious, aren’t you? I…didn’t they teach you in school?”

“I’m 32, fluff,” said Nick. “I am allowed to say _back in my day_ unironically. No, they did not teach us to use computers in inner-city public schools 15 years ago.”

“And you’ve never had to use one since?” asked Judy. A knot tightened in her stomach sharply, and she chastised herself for her absence of sensitivity.

“Not much use to a street hustler, I’m afraid,” Nick sighed. He looked down at her with a smile, but she couldn’t judge if he was forcing it. “It’s not like I had to do my taxes with one or anything.”

There was a moment of silence. Not tense, but a little sad. A telephone rang somewhere on the other side of the office, the caller greeted gruffly by some weathered-sounding officer. The water cooler blooped.

“Why didn’t you ask me?” Judy finally said, resting a hand on his knee.

“You’ve got plenty on your own plate, Carrots,” Nick said, turning back to the screen. “I didn’t want to be a burden.” It was the truth. Nick had been his own man, the only one responsible for his well-being, for longer than he could remember. He’d had friends and partners before, but none that he trusted with his weaknesses or short-comings. Those things were locked away, put into storage, hidden where no one could see them. He’d mastered his one small slice of the world and never moved on from it. The thought of asking for help was somehow alien to him.

“Nick, we’re partners,” said Judy. “We’re a team. I can only be as good as you are. And beyond that, I’m your _friend.”_ She gave him a meaningful squeeze as she said that, and he stared down into her face again. “There’s no problem of yours that will ever be a burden to bring to me, I promise you that. And this is a two way street, mister, because I am going to heap my troubles on you. All of them. And you’d better be there to help me out, rain or shine. I don’t care where you are. If you’re standing at the chapel about to get married, I’m coming to you for help.” Nick laughed, amused by this uncharacteristic hyperbole. He guessed his easy sarcasm was starting to rub off on Judy. That or she wasn’t exaggerating.

“Alright Carrots, you’ve got it,” he said. “I am an old, grey, thankfully-not-balding but maybe-hard-of-hearing fox, and I need some young whipper-snapper to show me how this thing works.”

Judy chuckled, and said, “Well, let’s start with what you do know. It can’t be nothing. You have managed to turn it on, after all.”

“I know this is a Wintoads PC, and yes, even I’m not so helpless that I can’t find the start button,” Nick replied. “The problems start after that, mostly with these two… _things._ ” He held up his keyboard and mouse, waving them as if they were sufficient evidence of the computer’s inherent worthlessness. “First of all, foxes are clearly not cut out for typing with the claws we’ve got. Have you ever heard of a fox secretary? There aren’t any, because we can’t type.”

“Anyone can be anything in Zootopia, Nick,” Judy said with a roll of her eyes. “Besides, McHorn manages with his keyboard just fine. He hasn’t even got digits to type with.”

“Well, that is scary. McHorn is scary,” Nick conceded. “Secondly, this stupid lump of plastic here” - he waved his wireless mouse at Judy – “is broken. And I mean that, objectively, it does not work at all, not that I dislike it and want to melt it in a fire. I already called out to tech-support as well, before you ask. I thought I was doing the right thing, told them that the mouse doesn’t work. They thought I was talking about an actual _mouse_ who works down in the support department. Next thing I know I get a call from someone called Lewis, demanding to know where I get off throwing around insults about his professionalism like that!”

That tipped Judy over the edge, sending her into a giggling fit that brought a frown to Nick’s face. “Sorry, I’m sorry Nick,” she said through chuckles. “Some people do call it a tracker instead, just to avoid confusion, but I don’t think the tech department is that stupid. They’re probably just hazing you because you’re the latest rookie.”

“Har-dee-har. Everyone loves a bunch of amateur comedians. I hope they think it’s funny when I explaining to the Chief why I’m three days behind on paperwork.”

“I reckon I can help you, here,” Judy said. “What exactly is broken about the thing?”

“It doesn’t work. It doesn’t do anything!” He gave it a vigorous rub on the desk, and pointed accusingly at the lack of activity on the screen. “See? It’s lazier than me on a Sunday morning! That or it’s slow enough to make Flash look like Roosain Bolt!”

“Let me see that for a second,” said Judy. Nick tossed her the mouse, which she puzzled over for a brief moment, then raised it so that Nick was looking at the underside of it. There was a green switch, which she clicked, and then tossed the mouse back to Nick. He started at it for a moment, then swirled it around on his mouse pad again. The cursor did an enthusiastic little dance on the screen.

“You sorceress.”

Judy’s smile grew devilishly wide. “Well, Nick, it took all my technological prowess, but I think I’ve solved your problem.”

Nick chuckled, and turned the mouse over in his hand. “I can’t believe that’s all it needed. I think we need to revise who’s _sly_ and who’s _dumb_ in this partnership, Fluff.”

“I could get used to sly bunny, I suppose,” Judy said brightly. “And there’s nothing in the rule book that says we can’t both be sly.”

They shared a moment of laughter, and Nick fixed her with a genuinely warm grin. “You know, Judy, my entire life I’ve never asked for help from anyone. Never dared. It always struck me as a sign of weakness. As soon as you have to rely on someone else, you’ve lost control of the situation. You’re setting yourself up to be let down at best, betrayed at worst. That’s why I got so good at one skill set, why I never let anyone see me with my guard down. If you hadn’t come along and shown me the error of my ways I would have lived out my life convinced I was a genius who knew everything, not an ignorant two-bit hustler who was frightened of letting people in, too dumb to realise what he was missing out on.”

“Nick…” It wasn’t the first time he’d confessed to her like this, but it was the first time he’d been so self-critical, the first time he’d pulled down the edifice of his former life so completely. But he was still grinning; hell, his eyes seemed to grow brighter as he spoke about his failings and insecurities. He was shedding armour that he’d once thought protected him, which was really just dead weight that kept him pressed into the dirt.

“I’m not good at everything, and I have a lot of catching up to do,” Nick continued. “I’m not good at asking for help. I can’t promise that’s going to change too quickly. But I can promise that I’m going to try never to keep a secret from you, and never to put my pride before our partnership. If we’re a team that’s only as good as the worst one of us, then I’ll be damned if I’m going to be an anchor holding us back. Foxes honour.” He crossed his chest with mock solemnity.

“Nick, you’re going to make me cry, you sentimental old canine,” Judy said, but his smile was proving infections, and his heartfelt declaration lit her from the inside like a fireplace. “My partner is brave, savvy and clever. I don’t need him to be perfect as well.”

“Well good, because you’re never going to ring perfection out of me. Case in point, now that you’ve bent this fiendish electronic monster to my will I have an avalanche of forms to submit. Is there anything else I need to know?”

“All the forms are on the ZPD server, right here” said Judy, indicating to some desktop icons. “You type in the information, save a copy to the server, and then print hard copies to go down to filing. Easy as blueberry pie. Just mind Rupert when you go down to Records; he _may_ have threatened to brutally murder you when I spoke to him last.”

“Eh, that’s not the first time that’s happened,” Nick quipped. He turned back to his computer and stretched. “Well, at least I know what I’m doing for about the next 6 hours. If I don’t get some of this paperwork off my desk it’s going to snap it in two. And it’s so close to knocking-off time as well,” he sighed, throwing a glance at his watch. “What sorts of fun things do you usually get up to on a Thursday night, Carrots? Give me something to think about while I’m tapping away into the night here…”

He blinked in surprise when Judy suddenly leaped up onto his desk. She gave the pile of work an appraising stare, and then placed her hands roughly at the halfway point, lifting that slice of the stack away.

“Carrots, no. Come on. I can’t feel good keeping you behind with me to sort this out. I made the bed. It’s for me to sleep in.”

“Weren’t you paying attention to yourself a moment ago?” Judy replied, resting her stack on the desk and fixing him with a look. “About team work and pride and all that Saturday-morning cartoon wholesomeness? I meant what I said about us Nick, and I’m going to prove it to you. Besides,” she continued, her ears flopping a bit as she spoke, but her smile holding fast, “I really don’t have anything to be getting up to tonight anyway. I’d just be looking for ways to kill time before tomorrow. The ZPD is my life, Nick, which means, by extension, so are you.”

Nick’s own ears flattened a little at that, as he was suddenly both admiring of and troubled by his partner. He couldn’t imagine having nothing besides work in his life. How on earth did she blow off steam?

“Alright, Carrots,” he relented, his easy smile returning. “I owe you one, and don’t you dare think I won’t remember and return the favour.”

“Well, I do have a condition,” Judy said, and raised the loose leaf sheet she had brought with her in initially. “You’re letting me keep this. I’m going to fold it up and keep it here, right in my wallet, and anytime one of us is stupid enough to think there’s any part of this job where we need to go alone, we take it out and rub it in the offender's face. Sound fair?”

“Deal.”

“Incidentally, why did you draw me to look like two snakes fighting over a watermelon?”

Nick snorted. “A complete lack of any artistic ability. My other great failing. You’ll notice I drew myself looking like a pineapple with arms, as well.”

“So you did,” Judy said with a smile, tucking the page away and recollecting her pile of forms. “Alright Slick, if we’re quick about this we can be done by 8 o’clock, right on time to catch the last express train to come through here. And I’ll tell you what, let’s make this interesting; I bet you I can finish more forms in the hour than you can. Loser buys coffee tomorrow.”

“Trust you to turn it into a race,” Nick mumbled, but the spark of competition twinkled in his eye at the challenge. “Alright rabbit, you’re on. But I’m starting right now. All’s fair in office work and war.” He spun in his chair and immediately started slapping buttons on the keyboard.

“Ack! I knew I couldn’t trust a fox!” Judy squealed, bouncing of his desk and rushing to her cubicle down the hallway. “Enjoy your lead while it lasts, Nick. You’re about to find out what carrot-farm dirt tastes like!”

As she shuttled off, Fangmyer threw a curious glance over her cubicle wall. “Now that is the strangest thing I have ever seen.” Her partner, Delgato, sitting a few seats away, leaned out with a look of barely-contained revulsion.

“Zootopia’s first small body-type officers are also it’s most nauseatingly saccharin. I’m going to be sick.”

“You know, Delgato, I’ve got some overdue paperwork floating around here as well. Any chance I can get you to split it with me?”

“I’ll split you if you ever ask me that again!” growled the lion, hunching back over his desk with pulverising air of irritation. “Cuddly bunnies on the police force. What the hell is the world coming to?”

Fangmeyer chased Judy with a grin, and muttered, “It’s just moving on. Like it should.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's not much to say about this one; it's a sweet little story about Nick's insecurity and Hopps' nauseating dedication. It won't connect directly with anything else; although, a series working our way through all the technology Nick doesn't know how to use would be pretty funny.
> 
> \----------
> 
> "Nick, it's a vacuum cleaner," Judy said. "Not a particle accelerator. You must be able to figure out how to turn it on..."
> 
> "I know," Nick muttered, turning the tube over in his paws. "This is a big moment for me, Carrots. The dawn of a new era."
> 
> "I can't believe you've never owned a vacuum before," Judy sighed. "Your apartment is disgusting; it's like 80% shed fur! What do you when it gets too filthy?"
> 
> Nick shrugged. "Usually I move."
> 
> "But you don't keep your security deposit, then!" said Judith, exasperated. "Have you never got your bond back?"
> 
> "Bond?" Nick frowned. "What are you talking about. Like...the spy?" He made a little pistol with his paw. Judy slapped her forehead.


	2. Past Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last of the two partially incomplete, and now finished, one-shots that I'd written earlier. This time the word prompt was 'young'. This is also another story I thought I hated until I took a break from it and reassessed it later. All of these stories take place roughly around the same time, but aren't going to directly connect or build characters in any way. Now I think I'm due for a break; I legit have callouses on my fingertips from over-typing.

They called Zootopia an engineering marvel, and rightly so.

What would anyone have said, fifty years ago, if one mammal had stood up and proclaimed they should somehow combine twelve unique biomes within a single city? To have arctic blizzards butting up against sweltering desert, all in the spirit of interspecies inclusiveness? Madmammal. Lunatic. Put them in an asylum. Stare at them through a tiny window. Show them ink blotter tests to try and decipher the maelstrom of nonsense inside their head.

And yet, somehow, it had all come together. Slowly. With setbacks. At great expense. But it had succeeded.

Nick was a little rusty on the history, but he remembered the key points of interest in the city’s past. Once upon a time, there had been plans to build walls to keep people out. Predators weren’t supposed to mix with prey. Polar bears had no business being near savannah lions. Wouldn’t everyone be better off if different species just kept with their own kind?

In the end, the voices of idealism had prevailed and sidestepped the bigots. Next thing you know, Zootopia’s downtown area is a thriving metropolis, with creatures of all shapes and size rubbing shoulders, or whatever parts happened to touch if they stood side by side.

Along with this unprecedented undertaking in the name of coexistence had come some pretty remarkable scientific advances, on which Nick was likewise hazy. As he understood it, each ecological zone that could not flourish in Zootopia’s natural temperate environment was sectioned off by climate walls; titanic, ecospheric buffers, designed to moderate the weather and temperature of that particular zone. Someone infinitely smarter and less fun to be around at a party had once explained to him how they worked, using words like ‘thermoelectric partition field generation’, but he hadn’t even been able to pretend he was interested. The upshot was they kept the snow in Tundratown frosty and the rain out of Sahara Square.

They did not, however, do anything for the weather outside those controlled zones. Downtown was still at the mercy of Mother Nature’s tyrannical whim, and for the last three days that had meant dreary, constant, bitter rain.

Nick hated the rain. He hated the way it snuck down his jacket collar and wet the clothes beneath. He hated the way it seemed capable of sweeping up, like some grasping tentacle, under the protection of umbrellas. He hated the way it sometimes flew sideways out of disrespect for gravity. He hated the cold. He _hated_ the floral-print Wellingtons his mother had bought him that he was too polite to throw away. He’d also been told that wet foxes stunk something abysmal. That didn’t bother him quite as much.

What was really ticking him off today was the way the heavens couldn’t seem to just open up and get it over and done with. He would have preferred a few hours of explosive thunder, and of rain that beat down like icy fists; it was unpleasant, but it could be endured. The miserable overcast sky, however, showed no intent of indulging him, and seemed determined to remain an irritating spread of grey fluff from one horizon to the other.

Nick’s mouth twitched. “Grey fluff?” he muttered, scratching his eyebrow. “What on earth is on my mind?”

A second later, there was a click as the passenger door swung open, and Judy bounced into her seat, a cardboard tray containing two lattes in one hand, her other deftly slamming the door behind her.

“Phew! What a beautiful day it is out there,” Judy said through a chipper smile. “It’s got nothing on Bunnyburrow’s weather, at least. Here’s yours.”

Nick took the coffee with reverence and swallowed a mighty gulp. He hadn’t known that the backbone of a ZPD officer’s day consisted of drinking coffee, but he was mightily glad of it. It should have been right up there with the ZPD’s other watchwords. Trust. Integrity. Bravery. Caffeine.

“Ahh, there it is. Sweet coffee-augmented reality,” Nick murmured. “So, you’re not scared by this raging tumult, then?”

“When I was eight, the Burrows had its worst rain in forty years. The banks of the river broke, the main street flooded, and we had water lapping right up to the back patio. As soon as the rain eased off, we went straight outside, built rafts out of some old barrels and timber, and became pirates for the rest of the afternoon.”

“Why am I so totally unsurprised?” Nick laughed. “I can see it now – Captain Carrots. You’d have an eye patch, and a peg leg, and a first mate that is smarter than you, but still grudgingly follows orders. Sailing the high seas in search of a trove of golden carrots…or at least an apartment that’s larger than a single room.”

Judy clamped one eye shut and menaced Nick with a hooked finger. “Yargh, don’t be makin’ fun of me proud pirate heritage, ye scurvy fox,” she growled.

Nick smirked, and took another swig of coffee. “Well, since the rain doesn’t seem to bother you, you can handle whatever work takes place outside the nice warm cruiser today, alright?”

“Wait just a second,” Judy protested. “I don’t remember agreeing to any such deal. What, have you got embarrassing photos to blackmail me with or something? I got coffee. You’re at least going to get us lunch.”

“Carrots, all the photos of you are embarrassing. And you have a vested interest in keeping me dry. If we get wet fox smell in the car, we’ll never be able to get it out.”

“What? What on earth is ‘wet fox smell’? That’s just wet fur smell. Nobody’s wet fur smells good.”

“That may be so, but a fox’s is indisputably the worst. Just ask anyone. We reek, like wet laundry left in a hamper overnight, like a dumpster outside a back-alley café in Sahara Square…”

Nick was cut off as Judy reached over the console and dealt him a lightning-fast blow to the arm. Nick drew back, rubbing his arm and chuckling. Sometimes that was the only way to shut him up.

“Now that you’ve done your best to avoid you share of our responsibilities,” Judy said, “perhaps you’d care to start the car so we can get on with our patrol. And take us down by Middletown Junior School at some point, would you? Apparently, they’ve been having all sorts of issues with truant students lately. It might be a good idea for us to go by for a show of force.”

“Oh yeah, Zootopia’s two smallest officers would be perfect for a ‘show of force’, right?” Nick laughed. “We’ll have them shaking like Clauhauser during a sugar crash.” Before Judy could thump him again, he snapped his seatbelt on, keyed the ignition and speared off into the heart of the city.

 

\----------

 

The rain refused to let up, and by mid-afternoon it became frenzied downpour. Inside the car the mood was relaxed, and while they kept their eyes peeled for trouble, Judy and Nick were settled in and happily passing the time trading stories from their youth.

“Did you keep out of trouble when you were a kit in school?” Judy asked at one point. “I bet you were top of the class; straight As in every subject.”

Nick snorted, trying and failing to hold back his laughter. “Judy, I think I skipped more classes than all the other students in my grade combined. I was rotten to the core.”

“Nicholas P. Wilde, I can scarcely believe my sizeable rabbit ears. You were the sort of rogue to ditch school?”

“Har har,” Nick fired back at her sarcasm. “I was always out running jobs for wise guys around town. Nothing too illegal, mind you – just chores and errands, mostly. It seemed like a good way to make cash at the time. And then I’d get suspended because I’d been skipping class, and that just didn’t make a lick of sense to me. It was just a big joke at the time. It drove my poor mother grey in the muzzle, though.” A tiny bit of the warmth dribbled out of his smile at that, and Judy gave him a gentle look.

“You don’t talk about her an awful lot. Do you guys speak?”

“Yeah, we’re on good terms. I’ve even apologised for wasting half my life on the wrong side of the tracks. It’s just…I don’t know. They’re just words. I feel like I need to do something to make it all up to her.”

“Well, officer,” Judy said, “If that gold badge on your chest isn’t sufficient atonement, I couldn’t guess what would be.”

Nick gave his partner a warm look. Sometimes it seemed that there wasn’t a thing that could dampen her spirits; that could throw off her step when it came to saying the right thing at the right time.

“Thanks, Fluff. Hey, looks like we’re heading into Middletown right now,” he said, spotting a sign that announced the fact rushing by. “Where about is this school full of troublesome teens that needs setting straight?”

 

\----------

 

A few minutes later, they came to a stop outside the school gates. Middletown wasn’t exactly a ghetto, but no one would confuse it for an affluent suburb by mistake.  The school was nestled in the heart of the commercial district, surrounded by aged little buildings with simple, unadorned signage. Some stores were closed, and heavy anti-intrusion cladding had been rolled over the windows to warn off miscreants. Graffiti was everywhere.

The rain had abated enough that they had their field of vision back, and Nick and Judy peered at the school from the car. It was an imposing place, made long ago from heavy, drab stone. The tiled roof might have been red in a distant past; now they were weathered various shades of brown by time and the elements. Determined creeping plants sprung from cracks in the wall here and there.

“I have seen more cheerful places,” Nick murmured.

“There’s no activity on the grounds,” Judy said. “There must still be classes. Come on, let’s take a few laps around the block.” They pulled away from the curb.

“Did your school look anything like that?” Nick asked, turning down a tight side street. Cars were parked bumper to bumper along its length, most with two wheels over the curb, fighting for space with the footpath.

“No. All my schooling took place outside. There wouldn’t have been space for 500 rabbits in a single classroom.”

Nick turned to face her, his eyes wide. “You’re kidding, right? A class of 500 kits? Boy, bunny teachers must have some superhuman patience.”

“Nick, slow down for a second…does that look like a school uniform to you?”

Judy gestured to a shop alcove, where some youngster – it looked like a fox from this distance – in a red and blue polo was hurriedly zipping a black jumper over his other clothes. His head disappeared into the darkness of a hood, and then, with a quick glance about, he disappeared into a nearby street.

“Certainly did, Hopps. This seems like something worthy of investigation. Ooh, it’s just like we’re real police officers, huh?”

Judy groaned and rubbed her head with her hand, as Nick slowly rolled up to backstreet and followed the youngster into it.

They spotted him not long later, in the company of five other similarly-hooded mammals. The rain was picking up strength again, so the huddled band didn’t notice Nick and Judy before they all drew spray cans out of their pockets and started to shake them. Quickly and efficiently, the band started tagging the concrete wall that bordered the footpath.

“Ok, remember Nick. They’re kids. They’re armed with paint. Let’s not do anything too surprising, huh?”

“Level-headed is my middle name. Right after Piberius,” Nick said, and they both slipped out of the cruiser, slamming the doors behind them.

“Guys, this is the ZPD!” Judy called as they approached. She had her hand on her taser, but had no intention of drawing. “You seem old enough to know that vandalism is an offence. Stop what you’re doing and don’t move.”

The band spun in shock, and stared at the advancing pair of officers.

“You heard the officer, guys,” Nick said, his brow furrowed. “Cans down, and hands where we can see them…”

Suddenly the group fragmented and started sprinting in multiple directions. One of them, however, was unlucky enough to stumble over a loose paving stone, and Nick managed to snatch the fabric of his jumper.

“Hey! Let me go! Don’t touch me!” came the petulant cries from inside the hood.

“Hopps, what is the police procedure if the suspect asks to be let go? Am I supposed to comply? They didn’t cover this in basic”

“Alright Nick, we’ve had our fun. Any chance we can take this inside and out of the rain?” Judy asked, paws on her hips.

“What about the other guys, huh?” the delinquent spat. “You’re just going to let them get away? Did you grab me ‘cos I’m a fox?”

“I gabbed you ‘cos you’re clumsy, kid. Give me a break. And I only need one person to tell me the names of those other amateur artists. Looks like that’s you.”

“I ain't telling you nothing!” The teen put up a fresh struggle, trying to wiggle free of his jumper, and earning nothing more than a pitiful shake of the head from Nick. Judy opened the back door, and Nick ushered the squirming kit inside.

Once he was locked in, Nick headed back to the driver’s side door, where he paused for a moment. It was still raining, so Judy figured it was serious. “What’s on your mind, partner?”

“Judy, we’re not taking this guy down to the precinct, alright?” he said. “We book his details here, and then we’ll take him back to the school. Drag him in front of the principal, let them decide what to do with him.”

Judy regarded her partner quietly for a second. Standing there in the rain, his fur growing dark as it saturated, water beading on the shoulders of his uniform. The usual mischievous sparkle of his eyes was gone, replaced by something more serious. She glanced at the juvenile in the back seat, who was glowering at them like they were moral enemies.

“Alright,” she said, and the pair opened their doors and climbed inside.

Judy produced a sheaf of arrest reports, and clicked her carrot pen. “Name?”

The kit turned his head aside, scowling at the world outside.

Nick sighed. “You know, the less you tell us now, the more we have the wring out of your principal when we take you back to school. It looks bad, kid.”

The silence dragged on for a moment.

“Lachlan,” the fox finally said sullenly.

“Parents?”

“My mom’s name is Rebecca. I don’t have a dad.”

“Do you have an address, Lachlan?” Judy asked.

“18 Valley Drive,” said Lachlan, and on they continued until she had completed the form. She didn’t ask him for the names of the other vandals.

“Alright, Nick,” said Judith. “We can’t sit around here all day. There’s policing to do.”

Nick smiled, keyed the ignition, and started off slowly down the narrow avenue. When he reached its end, she noticed he took a left instead of the more direct route. Now they’d need to travel a few blocks before they could loop around to return to Middletown High. She gave Nick a knowing grin.

“Well, I for one hope this is the worst we have to deal with today,” she said cheerfully.

“It makes a nice change from chasing purse thieves and kicking switchblades out of paws, doesn’t it?” Nick admitted.

“Just don’t let slip how much worse you were when you were a kit,” Judy said, grinning deviously. “Did you have ‘vandalism’ on your rap sheet? It must have been down two or three pages, if so.”

“Officer Hopps, shut your mouth,” Nick grumbled, but he was grinning from ear to ear. In the back seat, Lachlan’s ears flickered, even if he kept his stare set at the grey outside.

 

\----------

 

The principal was a politely-dressed polar bear called Ms Hamilton, who possessed that curious property of a sunny disposition and stony seriousness at the same time. She sat behind her desk, peering intently over her small spectacles, while Judy and Nick ran her through the specifics. Lachlan stood beside them; he had gone from rebellious to dejected is record time, and was staring at his shoes in a bid to avoid eye contact with anyone. The only speaking he had done was to surrender the names of his fellow miscreants, which he had done is a small, quiet voice.

When Judy finished, Ms Hamilton leaned forward on her desk. “Officers, I can’t thank you enough. We take truancy very seriously here; doubly so when it involves breaking the laws of the wider community. Lachlan, you’re to wait outside while I speak to Officer Hopps and Officer Wilde. Understood?”

“Yes, Ms Hamilton,” Lachlan said, and quickly dismissed himself. Nick watched him, and then turned to Judy.

“You got this, Carrots?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said. “Go easy on him.”

Nick sauntered out the door, giving the principal a roguish wink and a salute, and closed it behind him. The kit was sitting on one of the chairs available, still staring a hole in the floor. Nick took the other seat on offer, took out a pen and pad, and made as if he was taking notes, humming to himself as he did so. The hallway clock ticked loudly.

“How long have you been on the police?” Lachlan eventually asked.

Nick clucked his tongue, pressing his pen against his chin. “About four weeks,” he admitted, and he saw the kid blink in surprise from the corner of his eye. “I know. Not long, right?

“I’ve never seen a police fox before,” Lachlan muttered. “Down where I live, all the foxes work night shift at the docks. Except my mom. She’s a waitress.”

“She works late too, I take it?” Nick asked, and Lachlan nodded. “Well, life’s tough and money ain't free, kid. You don’t need me to tell you that.”

Lachlan’s paws tightened in his lap.

“My partner in there,” Nick said, tilting his head to the door. “She keeps saying anyone can be anything. She’s right, too, and she knows better than anyone that it isn’t easy. But can happen. The only danger is you’ll blow your chance if you never bother to try in the first place.”

There was a moment of silence, before Nick continued. “You know what I was before I got my badge?”

Lachlan shook his head.

“A crook. A petty hustler. You probably don’t believe that, but it doesn’t matter; I know I’m telling the truth. I bet you know plenty of foxes who are criminals, don’t you?”

Lachlan nodded.

“It makes sense,” Nick continued, “when from day one they tell you not to break the rules, but they don’t tell you what to do instead. Or worse; they won’t let you do anything else. Life’s tough for a fox in this city. That’s why I need more of us trying twice as hard to make foxes look good; to not fall in the deep end and drown.”

Lachlan put his head in his paws, sighing deeply. “My mom’s gonna kill me…”

“Ha!” Nick laughed. “You should be thanking Fox Jesus, kid. In my day, the cops dragged you down to the precinct and threw you in with the real low-lives, and made your parents pick you up from there. Made them walk in and see you standing shoulder-to-knee with some huge, tattooed rhino. Now _that’s_ a way to add grey hairs to your poor mother’s face. She never killed me, but I damn sure nearly killed her.”

The door swung open, and Judy stepped out. Nick got to his feet, tucking his notepad away.

“The principal wants to talk to you, Lachlan,” Judy said, motioned to Nick that it was time to go.

Lachlan got to his feet, took a deep breath, and opened the door. Nick shot him one last look before they turned the corner and left. He caught Lachlan’s eye, gave him wink, and then vanished from view.

 

\----------

 

A few blocks away they found a sidewalk coffee bar that was only moderately filthy, and bought two tall, steaming cups. The rain had finally cleared, even giving way to a handful of sunny beams that pierced the lead-grey clouds, and they loafed around the hood of their cruiser, enjoying the change of weather and drinking their coffee.

“Did we have a good day today or what?” said Judith.

“It was, until I tried this gutter runoff they’re calling coffee. It’s got grit in it and everything.” He peered into his cup melodramatically. “I think I see a toenail in there.”

“Oh, hush,” replied Judith, rolling her eyes. “A real cop can drink anything if it’s brown and says coffee on the side. Stop your moaning.”

“Thanks for going along with me back there, by the way,” Nick said.

“With not taking him down to the station?”

“I was in and out of there a lot as a kit,” Nick said. “Small stuff. Sometimes just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And they’d chuck you in the tank, with all the other thieves and hoodlums, with all their gang colours and scars, their teeth filled to points. It happens enough times, and suddenly you start to think you’re one of them.”

Judy grinned. “So, we’ve spared one fox the mistake of becoming a hustler? You’re definitely more than just words, mister. It’s probably time to call Ms Wilde and tell her the good news.”

Nick chuckled at that, and then looked thoughtful. “I wonder how many times I’m going to run into past me, making the same mistakes.”

“With any luck, every day. Until there’s none left.”

“Ah, knock it off, you soppy poet.”

The sky cleared just a little more, and a few more beams of blond light scattered down. Judith finished her coffee, and then shot Nick a sly smile.

“When I was fourteen,” she said, “we had the absolute worst teacher imaginable. Mr Cob. Like, on a scale of one to ten, he fell of the edge.”

“How bad was he?” Nick asked.

“He once marked me down for finishing a test too early, even though I aced it. He said something about needing to ‘take time and stop showing off’.”

Nick sipped the dregs of his coffee, eyebrows arched. “He sounds like a prize rectal wart.”

“Yep,” said Judy. “He used to drive around in this convertible Cattle-lac that he was super proud of. Always had the roof down. So, one day, me and some friends skipped class and went to my family’s farm. We’d just finished the corn harvest, and all the bug-bitten or fungal cobs got tossed in this big bin, and had started to rot in the open weather. We borrowed my dad’s truck, filled its tray with rotting corn, drove it back to school, and dumped it into his car. Piled it three feet high. Then we drove back home, parked the truck, and made it back to school in time for afternoon period. No one saw us at all. I could hear Mr Cob scream from a mile away.”

Nick stared at Judy. Then he burst in utterly helpless mirth. It was minutes before he regained even a shred of his composure.

“Judith,” he gasped between laughs, “does your dad know about that?”

Judith frowned. “Nobody knows about that, besides me, Jeremy Cotton, and Amanda Millworth. And you. And it had better stay that way. My dad would kill me, even if it was years ago.”

“That is the funniest thing anyone has ever said,” Nick grinned, wiping a tear from his eye. “Remind me never to cross you, ever.”

“Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

“Yeah, yeah. Make the world a better place and all that.”

Nick tossed his cup in the trash and slid into the driver’s seat.

“By the way, Nick.” Judith said, rolling her window down. “You are 100% correct. Wet fox smell is the worst. This car reeks now. I’m going to need an oxygen tank to breathe. I’m going to need medical attention.”

“I told you!” Nick cried. “I absolutely told you this would happen…” Their voices slowly vanished as their cruiser pulled out of its park and rolled off down the street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment if you enjoyed! Nick seems to have gotten a bit better at policing since the previous one-shot.


	3. Inflated Ego

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt was 'scale'. Enjoy!

Behind the shades, Nick was invincible.  Wearing them was the difference between being someone who was struggling against the world, and someone who was master of it. They were a part of him – or, more aptly, part of his armour. The chainmail that kept the slings and arrows of an uncaring world from opening a serious gash.

Take today, for example; surrounded on all sides by parade-goers, smiling and cooing, pointing and laughing. Without the glasses, Nick was just another schmuck in the crowd. A schmuck _fox,_ at that – small and insignificant and probably up to no good.

As soon as he pulled them down, he was cool. It didn’t matter that he was a fox anymore; he was the fox with badass glasses.

He had authority. He was to be taken seriously. His word was law, and others obeyed.

The uniform probably helped with that, too.

 

\----------

 

Zootopia’s Harmony Day celebrations, the city’s annual nod to its eponymous ideal of inclusion, were actually one of Nick’s favourite times of the year. Not so much because of the message – he knew better than most that the idea of acceptance always came with strings attached – as the way it took the familiar Zootopian urban sprawl and turned it on its head.

A thousand carnival-coloured stalls would spring up in Central Park overnight. Roadside food bazars would materialise, and pump a billion mouth-watering smells into the air. Lamp-posts suddenly became flagpoles for giant banners. Music everywhere; the clatter of marching brass bands competing with the distant snarl of electric instruments played on open-air stages.

Seeing the familiar undergo such a spectacular transformation had always filled him with delight as a youngster. And, later in life, the sudden influx of gullible marks allowed him to turn a tidy profit. All in all, nothing but fond memories for him.

Except for one thing.  The one pimple on the holiday’s otherwise unblemished buttock.

The Harmony Parade.

It was hard to put his paw on what exactly it was that made him so sour about it. Perhaps it was the way it shut down main street completely, and funnelled an atrocious number of mammals into such a confined space that being squished felt like a real danger. Or the way so many of them, grinning like morons, pointed the balloons out, as if a convoy of 5-story-high cartoon dirigibles might slip by unnoticed without their diligence. Most likely, he just felt offended that so many people were completely amused by balloons, which were scientifically unentertaining.

At any rate, it was said parade he was attending today, albeit this time in his official capacity as ZPD crowd control. This he found irritating; the only controlling of crowds he wanted to do was to make them go home so things could quiet down. Being a spectator in the vice-squeeze of a crowd was bearable. Having to work in it was not.

Judy, on the other paw, was having an embarrassing amount of fun at her first Harmony Day. Having come up in the Burrows, where they had the County Fair instead, she had only experienced a cheap likeness, with pastry judging, tea-cup rides and prizes for very large parsnips - homegrown and grassroots and an all manner of other adjectives that meant ‘boring’. She seemed utterly enthralled with Harmony Day’s incomparable scale. Currently, she had a stick of candyfloss the size of a garden shrub and was looking it over, making a tactical decision about the best way to approach eating it.

“Carrots, please. I can’t take you seriously right now,” Nick grumbled eventually, when the embarrassment became too much.

Judy finished her mouthful – she had decided on just burying her face in the side of the cumulonimbus of spun sugar – and gave him a quizzical look.

“I wasn’t aware that being taken seriously at a parade was something to worry about,” she said.

Nick sighed, then reached down and brushed a clump of clinging pink threads off her cheek.

“Of course it is,” he said. “We’re the only small body-type officers on the force. The ZPD had to create that classification specifically because of you.”

“That just makes us special,” said Judith cheerfully, her voice muffled by another mouthful of sweetness.

“No. Not special. Different. Obvious. You think the rest of the precinct isn’t snickering behind our backs sometimes?”

Judy lowered her fairy floss. “Nick, are you being serious?” she asked. “Do you think we’re an embarrassment or something?”

“I don’t think the precinct takes us seriously all the time. Night-howler case or no, we’ve still got a lot of unimpressed comrades at work.”

“You’ve seen our numbers, Nick. We’re nearly topping the precinct in, like, every quota they measure: arrests, processing speed, tickets issued. And don’t you remember a week ago, when you knocked that fleeing antelope down by throwing a trash can lid like a frisbee?”

Nick grumbled noncommittally; yes, that had been pretty cool. And yes, their figures were impressive. But that wasn’t what he was talking about. Again, it came back to the shades.

You couldn’t be a conman without the right attitude. It was all about poise. The stance. The flash of a white-toothed smile at the right moment. And it was untouchable, unflappable coolness. If you could master those techniques, then life stopped being a scramble to reach the top. Instead, you had wings, and picked and chose where exactly you felt like landing.

Nick might have left his legally-dubious life behind, but not the attitude. And how could he? It’s how he knew how to survive. Things that threatened that persona made him uneasy.

It wasn’t something he thought Judy would understand, so he stopped trying to explain and looked across the street. Delgato and Fangmeyer were keeping the crowds in check, corralling them with their substantial mass, stopping the excited or the stupid from blundering into the cleared road.

Here was a perfect example of what he meant. Fangmeyer was an excellent officer, but in just the few short months he’d been on the force, Nick already knew her weaknesses. Her ears flattened whenever there was mention of zooicide in briefings, and during some after-work drinks, she had talked about the first time she’d seen a body on the job. It still made her uncomfortable to speak about it in detail.

Delgato? Delgato was so wound up, with his seemingly permanent scowl, with that huge corded vein that bulged at his forehead when anyone tested his patience, that Nick knew exactly what buttons he’d need to push to shoot him over the edge.

That was after just a few weeks of watching them. The idea that someone else could watch him, and find out how to emotionally judo-throw him, didn’t sit easy with him.

Take Wolford, for example. He was also guarding the integrity of the cleared road, and stood with a military bearing, scanning the crowd with mechanical patience and precision, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses. He didn’t give off so much as a hint of his temperament, and Nick figured if he ever tried to emotionally judo-throw Wolford he’d get his arm wrenched out of its socket.

Hence the shades. They were protection, security.

And they looked, without question, so damn awesome.

“Nick, maybe it’s time you lost the shades,” Judy said. “They just aren’t right.”

Nick blinked, and spun to face her.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“The glasses, Nick. Your aviators. You should toss them.”

“Cleary, Carrots, you have gone senile in the hot sun. My glasses are awesome”

“You’re not a sheriff in the Burrows, are you?” she explained, finishing off the last puff of fairy floss. “You don’t chew a toothpick and say ‘pardner’. Those guys wear aviators. Besides, they don’t hide what you’re up to. You were staring at Wolford, right?”

“Wha…”

That, Nick did not expect. He quickly got his expression in order and said, “I’m looking at the crowds, Judy. You know, for criminals? Like a police officer might? That’s what I’m doing.”

“You were looking at Wolford. I know, because every time you do your tail goes kind of still, and your lip does this little twitch, like it’s trying to smile and you won’t let it.”

Nick was frozen. “Do I do that often?”

“Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes when a pretty vixen walks by – don’t deny it, you sly charmer, you,” she joked, and playfully elbowed him. “But you always do it when Wolford passes by. Is it because he wears shades, too? His really suit him; he looks like a secret agent. Maybe you should get a pair like that.”

“My glasses are fine, thank you,” Nick said, and a childish growl that he really wasn’t proud of nearly snuck into his tone. “They are the epitome of coolness. You don’t know what you’re talking about. And I do not get a lip tremble everytime–”

“Oh, Nick, here come the floats!” Judy cried, her eyes wide with delight.

Nick turned, and saw the first vibrant, inflatable colossus making its clumsy procession down the street. It may have been a bear holding hands with a sheep, but if that was the case then both animals were also suffering an allergic reaction to a swarm of infuriated bees. Nick winced at their bulging malformation.

“Oh gosh,” he hissed, rubbing a paw along his muzzle. “They just get worse and worse every year.”

“Hah! Look at them! I think they’re fantastic,” Judy said, clapping.

“They’re terrifying,” Nick said. “They’ll make the children cry. They’re in danger of making _me_ cry. Oh, what is _that?!_ ”

It was clearly supposed to be Gazelle, but whoever had prepared the canvas had only a passing acquaintance with what gazelles looked like, or had perhaps recently suffered a head injury. Balloon-Gazelle’s arms were as broad as her waist; she would have been a worthy opponent against Rhinowitz in an arm-wrestle. Judith applauded, and Nick wondered if somewhere, watching the parade on TV, a pop-star had just spat a mouthful of sparkling mineral water at the screen.

“This is amazing. Bunnyburrow’s festival has nothing on the city’s,” Judy said. “I can’t wait to see the ZPD float! We are going to look amazing!”

“Sure, a hilarious inflated Bogo is exactly what the department – wait, what?”

“The ZPD float. I think Clawhauser said he was driving it this year–”

“No. Stop. Wait. We? Did you say we are going to look amazing?”

“Yeah, we…” Judy cocked her head to one side, giving Nick a concerned look. “Are you alright Nick? Heat getting to you or something?”

“Must be. I _must_ have heatstroke, because it sounded for a second like you were saying that we are in the parade somehow.”

“Yeah, of course. Remember how they sent around those memos? That they needed ambassadors to lend their likeness for the parade? I thought it sounded like fun, and then I found out no-one else was interested. So I signed up.”

“But just you, you said? Not me?”

“Nick…you signed yourself up. Don’t you remember? Are you _sure_ you’re feeling ok?”

Nick was not feeling ok. He felt like he was freefalling, his stomach twisted in awful knots.

“What? _What?!_ I did no such thing!”

“I saw the form at Reception,” Judy said. “It definitely had your signature on it. I sort of assumed you just thought it would be fun to do it with me.”

Nick put his head in his paws. God, he _remembered now._ Weeks ago. One particularly rushed afternoon. He had already stayed behind for an hour, and quickly scrawled his signature on what he thought was a wad of routine forms. Had one of them been…

“This isn’t happening. This is one of those bad dreams you have because you’ve eaten too much cheese before bed,” Nick gasped.

“Cheer up, Nick,” said Judy. “We’re going to be the public face of the ZPD!”

“There’s a reason no one wants to be the face of the ZPD!” he hissed. “Especially when that face is made of canvas and stretched ten-feet-wide!”

“Oh! Here it comes!” Judith cried.

Not a bad dream. Reality. Nick swallowed, and turned fearfully to face their doppelgangers.

Balloon-Judy was the first to appear, sliding around the corner of the multi-story apartments on the street’s corner. Nick now an answer to the question, “What would Judy look like if she ate an entire cheesecake for each meal?”, for Balloon-Judy was falling substantially on the _balloon_ side. She looked like a bowling ball with rabbit features printed on; with four stubby limbs, and two elongated pillars, supposed to be rabbit ears, extending from the top.

Judy gasped, and burst into laughter. “I think they left the pump on for me a little too long,” she giggled, wiping away tears. “Oh, my, it doesn’t look a thing like me! Did they even look at my official identification photo?”

Nick had nothing to say. He simply stood, arms by his side, turned to concrete by fear, waiting for the inevitable.

Balloon-Nick was, at least, slightly more committed to looking like a fox than Judy’s hot-air clone was to looking like a rabbit. It was a commitment he wished had been abandoned, however, for it was a fox that had recently undergone some acute trauma. His snout was swollen; a giant, rubbery slug hanging off his bloated face. His ears? Vast radar dishes.

And the pièce de résistance? The jewel in the crown? The horrible cherry on top?

Giant inflatable aviators.

Nick watched the approach this nightmare impersonation, making a mockery of his most treasured article of fashion, not to mention his physique in general, with the most appalled cringe his facial muscles could summon up; like the elastic holding up the corners of his mouth had snapped, leaving them to droop forlornly downward in utter dismay.

Across the street, Fangmeyer was making a diplomatic effort to hide her smile with a paw. Delgato wore a grimace to match Nick’s own, his eyes so wide around with disbelief that one might have mistaken them for balloons as well. Wolford – cold, collected, professional Wolford; Wolford, the secret agent – had lost every shred of self-control and collapsed on the pavement, pounding the ground with his fist in the midst of his hysterics, the unexpecting crowd around him jumping away in surprise..

Clawhauser, driving the heavy police SUV that functioned as a parade float, saw both Nick and Judy as he passed by, and gave them an excited, oblivious wave, which Judy returned with equal enthusiasm.

And then they were gone, off down the road, waving their inflated butts mockingly in Nick’s face, over-swollen tails swishing from side to side.

Nick stood for a moment, and then silently faced his partner. With sarcastic solemnity, Nick took the glasses off, and placed them, crown-like, on Judy’s head.

“They have been ruined,” he said, wounded. “Now you must wear them, for they are dead to me.”

Judy was still grinning like a kit at the top of a Ferris wheel, but she reached over and put her arm part-ways around Nick’s waist. “Hey, partner,” she said, giving him a friendly squeeze, “It’s not how you look. It’s what you do. And what you do is hit criminal antelopes in the back of the head with trash lids. You’re my ginger ninja, and that makes you cool in a way that these aviators just can’t compete with.”

Nick glanced across the street again. Fangmeyer had lost the battle to conceal her mirth. Delgato followed the escaping balloon monsters down the street with his eyes, his expression now closer to disgust than disbelief. Wolford was waving off two paramedics who thought he was suffering from a heart attack, and were trying to put an oxygen mask on him.

Cool in a way, huh?

He decided he could give up this one piece of protection. Not the entire suit of armour. But this one scale, this one gauntlet. Someday he might stand naked and proud, and challenge the world to do its worst without fear of how deep the cuts could be. But for today; just this one piece. He could do without it.

He looked back down at Judy, and cracked a smile. “Fine, Fluff. I guess I can settle for that. And that trash can lid thing _was_ pretty awesome, wasn’t it?”

“The most awesome, Nick. Action-hero cool.”

“Can I have my shades back?”

“Uh, no,” said Judy, tipping the glasses down off her head so they covered her eyes. She looked like a complete yokel. “I think I kind of like them, now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to write these fairly quickly, so they're a bit less polished and paper-thin when it comes to theme, but since the point is to be short and snacky then I'm happy with that. I've seen so much relationship-centered material about Nick and Judy that writing them as a platonic pair is actually kind of hard. I keep wanting to make off-hand comments from their inner monologues about flickering desires. Must be something wrong with my brain. Anyway, enjoy the fluff!


	4. Hot to Trot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've paused writing Of Salt And Steel for a short moment, just while I go back over it's old chapters and compile some notes to help keep its consistency going forward, so I wrote a Fluff Piece to tide things over. And then, it just kind of grew and grew. Prompt was 'investigation'. Enjoy!

7:36 am.

Already it was 32 degrees Celsius, and that number was sure to climb higher.

Judy lay naked on her bed, staring at the fan blades on their lazy, eternal circuit. They weren’t achieving much beyond stirring the uncomfortably warm air around the room. Worse still, a storm had blown over a few days ago, and although they had sealed the windows up, stray sand had somehow infiltrated the rooms and left them with an irritating, dusty odour. Evidently, when Precinct One officers were farmed out on special assignments to other areas, like Sahara Square, they didn’t necessarily spring for five-star-accommodation. Or even three-star. They got whatever number of stars suited a place without air-conditioning. One-and-two-thirds.

Judy had slept for maybe three hours, and she was definitely feeling it. Her arms and legs were lead heavy, her head churning like white-water rapids. How on earth she was supposed to do her job properly in this state was an unpleasant mystery.

Thankfully, she had someone to share the load with, and she smiled at the thought that, even if she did pass out in the passenger seat of their cruiser and start snoring, it wouldn’t put a dent in Nick’s lead; he’d been caught napping in just about every room at ZPD headquarters, and was inexplicably lucky that it hadn’t yet been Bogo who chanced upon him, sprawled in a filing box, tongue rolling out of his mouth while he snoozed.

She glanced at the clock again. 7:41. It was apparently not hot enough outside to melt time. She had to get up.

She snatched up a peach tank-top and sweatpants and called out, “Nick! I hope you you’ve got coffee brewing already! I’m in danger of flatlining over here!”

“Yeah, fresh and everything,” came the reply. “Come and get it”

Judy quickly checked her attire was in passable order -- she didn’t want to put her uniform on until the last possible moment, in a desperate bid to preserve its appearance, so this rumpled ensemble she’d had on for the past two days would do --and stepped out the door to the safehouse living room.

Nick was on the couch, sitting in full view, wearing nothing but a pair of loose-fitting striped boxers. He saluted her by raising his mug.

“Morning, Sleepless Beauty,” he quipped.

“Sweet cheese and crackers, Nick!” Judy gasped, snapping her eyes shut and turning away. “You’re not dressed!”

“You’re hardly presentable yourself, Carrots,” he said, taking a sip of coffee. “You’ve been wearing that pink top so long, you’ve left a permanent impression on it. It’s like a rabbit Shroud of Turin.”

“I meant in terms of coverage, Nick!” Judy shouted. She peeked through her fingers so she could locate him and level an accusatory finger. “There shouldn’t be any point in the day where I have to look at more than one-third of your bare fur! Why don’t you have a singlet and pants on?”

Nick shrugged. “It’s too hot for clothes. Foxes don’t sweat, so if you don’t want me panting in your ear all day, keeping me cool is a high priority. What are you doing?”

“I’m looking for something to censor you with,” Judy said, still shielding her eyes with one paw while the other groped about on a nearby counter. There’d been a towel or a tablecloth there yesterday, she remembered. “And if you want to slouch around with so much on show, why don’t you do it in your bedroom?”

“There’s no TV in there,” Nick said with a shrug. “As an officer of the law, it is my constant duty to be up to speed on important news from around the city. Some mammal’s life might depend on it. Ooh, see? The Zootopia Charity Triathlon raised over $10,000. That’s nice. That’s something to know.”

Judy’s paw closed over the material she was looking for – yep, a towel – and she lobbed it at Nick’s voice, hitting him square in the head.

“That’s a start,” Judy sighed. “Now are you going to put something on? Something that leaves less to the imagination?”

“Imagination?” Nick muttered, standing to tie the towel around his waist like a sarong. “What do you imagine most foxes have under their getup? Grasping tentacles? My boxers don’t leave things to the imagination.”

“Nick, it’s like someone’s put a tea-towel over a single muffin. It’s well defined.”

“Alright, fine,” he conceded, draining his mug and heading towards the shared bathroom. “I guess I need a shower anyway. Foxes don’t even sweat, but it sure feels like I do at the moment.”

“Be quick about it, too,” said Judy. “We’ve got about thirty minutes to be out of here if we’re going to check in at the Sahara Precinct. Berries! I’m barely going to have time for coffee as it is.”

“Well, maybe if you were less concerned with my dress arrangements, you’d have more spare time.”

“Nick, you know I love you,” Judy said, tipping coffee into an appropriately-sized mug, “but sometimes you’re the most infuriating animal I’ve ever met. And I live next neighbours who talk at a volume suitable for a shooting range.”

“You should have read the label before you picked me as a partner,” Nick said, and vanished into the bathroom. Judy shook her head and took a slurp of her coffee. She felt the strain in her eyes begin to alleviate, the life returning to numb fingers. Thank you, caffeine.

“Oh, and Carrots?” Nick said, reappearing in the doorway momentarily.

Judy gave him a stare – _what?_

“Try not to peek,” he grinned, and disappeared again before Judy found something else to throw at him.

 

\----------

 

Despite Nick’s unconscious attempts at sabotaging their morning schedule, they made it just in time for the cross-town express, _just_ in time for their 9:00 briefing, and finally signed out their cruiser and started down Central Avenue a little after 9:20.

The road afforded beautiful views of the city’s sweep of architecturally-curious houses; bulbous, square and spire-like, all painted in an autumnal range that drank up the desert heat. They could also see the dominating bloom of the Oasis Casino, less spectacular during the day hours without its cloak of dazzling lights, but still impressive. They were not destined for the glitz of Sahara Square’s centre, however. Their lead was somewhere a little more plebeian.

“So, this Taamir character,” Nick said, lazily rolling his tongue over an ice-pop he’d bought. “What exactly is his motivation in giving up Dexter?”

“Taamir was the bookkeeper in the scheme,” Judy said as she drove. “A bit-player; it’s unlikely he even knew the specifics of the operation. But he knew enough to imagine he’d get jailtime once the story broke. I’m betting he thinks he’ll avoid a cell if he hands over Dexter.”

Dexter Doyle. A counterfeiter with a particular skill for near-perfect replications of famous artwork. As their intel had it, Dexter made his money in conjunction with a band of burglars who would switch the real articles with his forgeries. They were so skilled, so _damned careful_ , that up until recently the ZPD’s casefile on the operation had been single-page slim.

Then, just a few weeks ago, a curator had realised the achingly-expensive original Growlvadore Dali in the Zootopian National Gallery was ingenuine, largely because the forger had tauntingly – foolishly -- left a tiny signature on his work. One of the thieves had left a pawprint, as well, and next thing anyone knew the careless felon, Bruno, was in the ZPD’s interrogation room, and the ZPD had a toehold in one of the most notorious criminal forgery rings in recent history.

Admittedly, all was not perfect. Bruno was adamantly keeping quiet -- more to do with reprisal amongst thieves than honour. But Wolford was a walking polygraph, and cunning to boot, and after a few days he had somehow tricked the burglar into giving up Dexter’s involvement, and also that he was hiding out in Sahara Square. The tip that had come a few days later, directly from Taamir, proclaiming to know Dexter’s exact whereabouts, was just icing on the cake.

“Taamir must be really rattled to call us out of the blue,” Nick wondered. “Those old associates of his must be looking to thump his jaw shut.”

“That’s why we’re really against the clock here,” Judy said. “We need to find Taamir before the thieves do, and then catch Dexter before he can skip town. That won’t be easy for him, since so many mammals have him on their radars, but he’s a smart sucker; he’ll sneak out by plane or train or something sooner or later.”

“That’s the problem with chasing counterfeiters,” Nick mused, lashing the last of the ice of his stick. “They can make as many passports as they like. He could be Gustav the middle-aged truck driver by now.”

“The only thing he’s going to be is a prisoner in ZPD correctional. There’s no way we’re letting the century’s greatest forger slip through our paws.”

“Greatest forger,” Nick scoffed. “I don’t know what the fuss is all about, anyway. They just looked like melting clocks to me. And speaking of melting, if Dexter’s such a genius, why the hell did he pick a desert in summer as his hiding place?”

“Exactly,” said Judy. “No one would have thought to look here. Nick, I'm going to park on Silica Drive, and we can go through the Open Market on foot. Taamir's hideout is on the other side of the market, close to the Oasis; we'll never get a park there."

Nick looked disgusted. "You want to walk a half-kilometre in this heat?"

"I don't want to, Nick," she said with a frown. "It's the fastest route. And every minute we haven't spoken to Taamir is one he might decide to change his mind and pull a vanishing act. Or worse, his old friends put him in a box and saw him in half."

"Alright, ok," Nick mumbled, as she pulled the car in a bay on an off-street and killed the engine. "The law before comfort, I suppose."

He opened his door; an appalling flood of sun-griddled air rolled in, and he recoiled from its sting. He flipped his aviators down, sparing his eyes the worst, and rolled up his sleeves to let the breeze at his arms.

"Honestly," he said, climbing out of his seat, "how any mammal could voluntarily live here is beyond me. It’s hot enough to make the paintwork on the car run..."

He stopped in his tracks. He was looking at Judy, who had produced a white-and-blue chequered cloth and bundled her ears into it. Now it perched on her head, sitting there like a giant, coiled snake.

"You ready?" she asked.

Nick had always been an expert at controlling his reactions, at only showing the emotion he wanted, but something about Judy just got to him. He fought off his laughter with a snort, and said, "What is it, Judy? Are you going native on me? Or is this actually an undercover mission?"

"Very funny," she said, rolling her eyes. "There are ice packs under here, to keep my ears cool. You know bunnies and heat are a bad mix.”

“Well, Pawrence of Arabia, lead the way.”

The Open Market was one of the busiest convergences in the whole of Zootopia. Thankfully, the civil architects who had erected it had accommodated for the amount of expected pedestrian traffic when an entire section of the city congregated at one location for nearly every need. The bazaars were a medley of grocers, tailors, peddlers of general curio, and the customers a sea of camels, hyenas and wildebeest, all browsing and buying under the shadow of the crimson shade-sail that ran the entire length of the market. Nick was appreciative of the cover, although the ambient temperature was still steep enough to get him panting.

"Why would Taamir pick this of all places to hide?" Nick wondered. "There's more mammals than at a sell-out Gazelle gig."

"Hiding in plain sight," replied Judy. "Any criminal would expect an informant to hole up in some backstreet warehouse. This is a lot less obvious...what?"

"I can't take you seriously, Judy. Not dressed like that-"

Short and sharp, right on the shoulder. God, did that woman have a mean right fist. "Ouch!"

"You can't take anything seriously, Slick," Judy retorted. "And after your little stunt this morning, you're in no position to criticise how anyone is dressed."

"Little?!" gasped Nick, mock-scandalised.

"Yeah, little," said Judy with a smirk. "Even by rabbit standards."

That got Nick to cackle in appreciation. But he felt there was a serious point to be discussed; "Did it really bother you that much, Carrots? Sorry if it did; bachelor habits are hard to shake free."

"Nick, honestly, after two weeks of sharing space and not sleeping properly, I just want my own apartment back." It might have been small enough to give a mole claustrophobia, but it was her home. She was starting to miss its cosy, mildewy embrace.

“Second that,” said Nick. “As soon as I can pad around the place in my birthday fur again, I’ll be a happy fox.” He saw Judy scrunch her face up, and he grinned. “There’s no call to act coy. Every mammal’s a naturalist at home.”

“Nick, I’m going to have to stop you there, because A, you’re talking about me being naked, and B, this is the place Taamir told us to go.”

It was pretty non-descript; a flat square building of beige stone. A bright yellow banner proclaimed it was one Gyasi’s Electronic Repairs.

Judy and Nick pushed through the front door to the welcome of a tiny greeting bell. Its brassy note rung around an empty shop, though; there was no sign of Taamir, or anyone else.

Nick sniffed the air. “Someone has been here,” he said softly.

“He’s cautious. Wait a second,” Judy said, unrolling her turban and icepacks, placing them on the store counter. Then she took out her flashlight and pointed it towards the back of the dim store, clicked it off and on three times, and said, “You know what the problem with giraffes is?”

“They always have their head in the clouds.”

A dark shape emerged from the shadow, and revealed itself to be a sandy-furred ferret with a deep, guttural accent. He wore glasses and -- Nick thought this was certifiably insane -- a long brown tunic teamed with a maroon scarf.

“Taamir. Good to meet you.”

“Are you two nuts?!” the ferret panicked, slinking towards them. “To come here in uniform, now anyone could know I am working with the police!”

Judy was about to respond, but Nick beat her to it.

“That’s right, bean counter,” he said, “which means things were just narrowed down to two options for you. And since one of those options is to let your old associates find you and stitch you up, lets actually assume it’s one option: tell us what you know about Dexter’s whereabouts, and then accompany us into protective custody.”

Well, it was brusque, but Nick’s bargaining certainly got results. Taamir, to put it lightly, did not look impressed.

“Nowhere I go, until I know for certain the DA will offer a deal to me. Not one step with you. I take my chances hiding from the organisation myself.”

“Then you’d better start by telling us where Dexter is,” Judy said, dialling into Nick’s manner. They could coax Taamir back into coming directly with them later.

Taamir chewed his lip, mulling over his options, and then finally sighed.

“Dexter is planning on leaving on a fishing trawler out of the Canal District in two days. There are a handful of captain’s there brave enough to transport a wanted criminal, if the price is right. Once he’s off-shore, he can go where he pleases. Be anywhere in the world inside a month.”

Judy looked at Nick. “Two days. That’s sooner than I’d hoped.” She turned back to Taamir. “Do you know the name of the captain he’s in contact with? The name of the ship?”

“I do not know these things,” Taamir said. “Now, you must go. Quickly, before someone spots you, and they know where I am. When I hear that Dexter has been caught, I will contact with you again.”

“Ok, Taamir,” Nick said. He wasn’t smiling. “There’s just one little issue we need to resolve before that.”

“O-one issue?”

“Yep. One little one. And that’s that you’re a terrible liar.”

Taamir was speechless, his beady eyes going from Nick to Judy, who was looking at her partner like he’d lost his mind.

“How-how dare you! I put my life on the line, and–”

“Save it,” Nick said. “I’m the Da Vinci of liars, and you’re peddling a child’s stick figure sketch by comparison here. Firstly, the Canal District is as far away from Sahara Square as possible. That’s way to convenient.”

Judy was looking at Nick in near alarm. She opened her mouth to object, but Nick cut her off.

“Secondly, Judy might not have caught it, but there is definitely fur dye in this room. Recently used. If we take a peek around, I’m willing to bet we’ll find some empty tubes of Honey Ginger Brown somewhere. And thirdly; look, I did business all over the place in a past life. Tried to avoid Sahara Central because it’s hot enough to blister fur. But even on just a few trips, I picked up the accent, and yours is a sad impression. They don’t diphthongise every single vowel here. They don’t stress the ‘O’ like you do. And they don’t butcher grammar the way you are. All in all, that’s a pretty poor showing for someone with your attention to detail, eh Dexter?”

The ferret stood stock still. Not so much as a tremble. His eyes danced between the two officers.

And then he vanished out of his robe and scarf, clothes tumbling to an empty pile in the floor, and with weasel-like dexterity he hit the glassless window behind them and popped through the bars, vanishing into the street beyond.

“Oh, Nick!” Judy shouted, her eyes bug-wide. “That was him! I’ll pursue! You go out the front and cut him off!”

Judy went from motionless to Olympic sprint in half a second. She flew at the same window Dexter had vanished through, blasting it off its hinges, landing in a crouch on the other side before she tore off after the suspect.

Nick made to follow her command, but paused for just a second.

“Might need you,” he said, grabbing Judy’s headscarf and icepacks. Then he rushed out the front door.

 

\----------

 

Dexter knew he wouldn’t be able to outpace the bunny. He was an artist, for cripes sake! But he was naturally evasive, and if he took enough turns, he thought he might just be able to lose her for long enough to make a getaway.

He could hear her footfalls close behind him, like a drummer playing double time, and he didn’t dare glance over his shoulder to see just how close behind she was. Instead, he threw himself down a right turn, into an impressively-narrow alley. Judy put the brakes on and made the turn, but he was already snaking left at the alley’s exit by the time she had squeezed into the vice-tight gap. When she popped out the other side, Dexter had his lead again. She scowled, and took off like a shot, like a meteor burning a hole in the atmosphere. Her muscles started to ache.

She had closed the gap when Dexter took another break-neck left, and this time Judy thumped into the wall shoulder-first. It hurt, but not as much as the sight of Dexter making his break for freedom, for the end of this alley terminated back at the Open Market. He could disappear into the crowd, and they’d be finished. Legs aflame, her shoulder throbbing furiously, Judy raced off after him one final time, burning desperation for fuel.

But she wasn’t quick enough. He’d gained too much ground. She’d lost too much stamina. He was going to get away.

And then Nick appeared. Side-stepped out from behind a building, putting himself between Dexter and freedom.

“Judy!” he shouted. “This is how you throw a towel!”

He had the balled-up headscarf in his hand, and he pitched it like Walter Johnson throwing a rocket-powered ball. It slapped Dexter right in the face, unfolding and enveloping his head. The force was enough to knock him backwards, as well, and his legs shot out from beneath him like a slapstick comedian standing on a banana skin. He reverse-summersaulted, and slammed into a pair of trash cans with a pulverising _clang_. When he finally came to a halt, he was out cold.

Judy lopped to a stop next to Nick, and fought to get her breath back.

“Nick! That was incredible!” she huffed extatically. “There’s no way that move is anywhere in the official handbook.”

“Nope. A one-off Nick Wilde special. One hundred percent effective, too.”

“Be honest with me, Nick,” Judy said. “Did you really figure it was Dexter just from that one conversation? You weren’t holding out on me on intel?”

“It doesn’t say full marks for ‘attention to detail’ on my assessment for nothing, Fluff,” he boasted, grinning from ear to ear. He went and checked that Dexter was nothing more than unconsciousness, and snapped a pair of ferret-scale cuffs on him.

“Is he alright?”

“Yeah, just knocked out. And probably a bad case of depression when he comes to in a few minutes and realises he’s nicked.”

Judy chuckled, which turned into a wince when a stab of pain went through her shoulder. Nothing broken, but definitely bruised.

“Here, you’ll be wanting these back,” Nick said, and handed her the icepacks she’d been using to cool her ears. She pressed them to her shoulder, and them motioned towards Dexter.

“You don’t think he’d appreciate them a little more?”

“He’s an artist. They thrive on suffering.”

Then Nick hefted the limp ferret over his shoulder, and they headed back to their cruiser to call in the good news.

 

\----------

 

5:02 pm.

The precinct was, of course, still operational, but all of the day-duty officers who usually clocked out at four stuck around, and the most elated party in the history of the ZPD took place. They cleared the conference room, rolled out the carpet, prepared a reckless amount of punch, and congratulated the heroes who had brought the case to a close.

“So wait, wait,” Wolford said, after the back-patting was over, and everyone had heard a rendition of Nick’s towel-throwing story, “I sweat this Bruno goon for two days, to get information on the greatest counterfeiter in the world, and this bozo is dumb enough to turn _himself in?_ In disguise, to try and lead us down the wrong track?”

“Pretty much,” said Judy. “Sorry to steal your thunder, buddy.”

“Man, there’s no way ‘helped apprehend Dexter Doyle’ is going to look half as good on my resume once that story gets out.”

“Well, how do you think I feel?” Nick complained. “I’m the one who took the dumbest criminal mastermind of all time down with a scarf! How’s that for embarrassment?”

“You shut your mouth,” said Wolford, sipping his punch. “That story is going to go down as legend around here. And you’re still technically the rookie. God, what is the world coming to?”

He paused when a shadow loomed over them, and all three turned to see Bogo giving them a dead-pan stare.

“Hopps,” he said. “How’s the arm?”

“Healing just fine, sir.”

“Wilde. Same question?”

“Deadly accurate, sir.”

He simply looked at Wolford, for whom he didn’t have an arm-based inquiry. Wolford just nodded.

“This was exceptional work, officers,” he said, and something that looked like a smile curled at his lip. “You are, all three of you, true credits to the force.”

Nick, Judy and Wolford all saluted, smiling. That was tremendously high praise, coming from Bogo. And it was well backed up with the bonuses they’d received from being on special assignment.

When Bogo turned and left, Nick turned to Judy. “Well, you ready to get out of here?” he said.

“Sure.”

Wolford shot them a raised eyebrow. “You’re not going to stay and revel in our success?”

“Wolford, I’ve had two good night’s sleep in the last fortnight,” Judy said. “My reward is I get to go home, put my feet up, and snooze in a place that doesn’t feel like the inside of an oven.”

Wolford grinned. “Have a good night, you two. And congratulations.”

Nick and Judy farewelled Wolford, made their excuses to a handful of other mammals who stopped to chat, and hurried out of the building to catch the last express train across town. They caught the same train to reach the ZPD of a morning, but once they disembarked at Herd Street Station, Nick lived a ten minute walk away, and Judy had a second train trip on one of ZPD’s smaller lines. They got off the carriage, and faced each other.

“So, back to your own pad to strut about in the buff?” she joked.

“Judy, I promise, for the sake of your delicate imagination, that I will wear at least a pair of boxers. Tight fit, too.”

She grinned, then threw one arm around his waist, receiving a hug from him in return.

“I’ll see you back here on Monday,” she said, and with a wave she slipped onto the short-line train and made the five-minute trip to her stop at Garden Point.

 

\-------

 

The station was close to her apartment, and in short order she was up the stairs, through the front door, and sitting on her own bed. It was a mild, machine-controlled 24 degrees. She never thought she could call this an accurate description of heaven, but it was. Slouched back on her bed cushions, she sighed through a broad, contented smile.

Then, a few minutes later, her smile was just a smirk.

Then, it was gone all together.

She sat up, looking around the tiny space of her apartment.

It felt like all she had wanted for so many days. Her little slice of privacy back. But it was wrong. It felt all wrong.

She switched on her TV – the newest addition to her limited catalogue of furnishings – but the dramatic facsimile of reality couldn’t hold her attention. Half an hour later, she couldn’t stand it any longer.

She picked up her phone and called him.

“Judy?” came Nick’s voice on the other side. Casual, but a hint of concern. “Everything alright?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine Nick,” she started, and then balked. She wasn’t really sure why she had called. She wasn’t certain what she had wanted to say. And then, when her pause dragged on and became in danger of turning awkward, she decided to just tell the truth.

“Actually, Nick, everything’s not fine. My place seems kind of…I don’t know. Small. Lonely.”

There was a silence.

“Well, seeing as how I’m now showered and immaculately dressed, it seems a shame to waste it slumming around my pad. What are you suggesting, Carrots?”

“My place? Movie?”

“The Bunisher?”

“What, the one with John Tra-vole-ta?”

“It is a classic.”

“I’ll order pizza, then,” she smiled, and added, “Hey, Nick. Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said, my main goal is to show you guys how much fun it is to ride off the beaten track and see what's happening elsewhere in Zootopia. I've seen Tundratown and Bunnyburrow, and I want to see more of the city. Perhaps I haven't read enough of the fandom, but Sahara Square seems an oft-neglected fourth child next to other locations. Anyway, I just wanted to tell a basic police-procedure catch-the-suspect story, and thought the desert would be an interesting place to set it. Let me know if you have a favourite, little-visited location, and I'll see what I can do about liberating it from obscurity.


	5. Nemesis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff piece number 5! Well...I thought it was worth celebrating, so I went back to CombatEngineer's suggestion of a story that explores Nick wrestling with household appliances.

 

For the nocturnal mammal, the constant threat, the eternal enemy, was the early morning.

More so for some than others; the majority of night owls preferred to live in the districts where everyone’s working day was calibrated to the sunless hours. But some chose to venture out of those midnight zones to mix with the diurnal dwellers, and for whatever privilege they gained there was a heavy price to pay -- persistent sleeplessness.

Nick was less affected than most, as foxes weren’t completely nocturnal. He did not recoil from the sun like a vampire. But he did find drifting off at night a struggle, and had spent the past thirty-odd years of his life stockpiling methods for dealing with the problem. Sleeping pills. Frequent naps. When it was really important that he shed consciousness quickly, he’d found that reading a few pages of _50 Shades of Grey Fur_ would put him out like chloroform.

His closest ally of all, however, was coffee. Bitter-sweet, aromatic, life-sustaining coffee. He liked it in the same sense that the diabetic like insulin. It was medicinal.

And it had become a matter of urgent concern for Nick as well, who was padding out of his bedroom one Friday morning, having shed his cocoon of bedcovers but not quite reaching the stage metamorphosis into a beautiful butterfly. Nick could appear monstrous of a morning: black bags under his bloodshot eyes, hair standing at all angles. Today he was hardly at his best; a midnight dream about being attacked by sentient blueberries had robbed him of any deeply fulfilling sleep. He yanked on his last clean uniform, and went into his apartment’s basic but comfortable kitchen.

The concern, so to speak, was waiting for him. Some would call it an ‘espresso maker’.

And an impressive example of one, at that. It was exceedingly tasteful -- all burnished silver and strips of black and cream. It had a curious asymmetricity, like a warped teardrop. Very dolce vita. A modern art sculpture, that also happened to make cappuccino.

This futuristic method of delivery was new in Nick’s life. Previously, he had gotten his daily fix from a simple plunger that he’d bought second-hand. He’d haggled over the price, too. For years, his trusty plunger had kept his blood-caffeine levels at healthy, functional levels. It had even grown a sort of personality: worn, but determined; slightly crusty; a fire hazard on occasions. It was a little like Nick himself.

And then he’d gone and knocked it off the bench. Smashed it to pieces. Killed his best friend.

His plunger’s funeral had coincided with his 33rd birthday, so the tragedy was compounded when a huge, almost hyperbolically colourful present had appeared on his doorstep, with a ‘best wishes’ tag bearing congratulations in Judy’s unmistakeable paw-writing. Inside had been this espresso machine.

She had selected it with mathematical precision: it was a replacement for something he needed; it was compact enough to fit in his crowded kitchen space; it boasted that it was simple-to-use. It should have been perfect. But in ticking all the good-for-Nick boxes, she may have missed some of the subtle nuances regarding what, exactly, Nick preferred in a kitchen appliance.

For one thing, Nick required infantile levels of simplicity in his morning routine. Anything more complicated than ‘round-object for round-hole’ was beyond his aptitude at that stage of the day. Well, this machine _was_ simple. It communicated exclusively in iconography, and its instruction manual was a single piece of paper. One page. Things don’t get simpler than that.

Except, Nick couldn’t begin to guess what the tiny hieroglyphs could mean. Easily decodable by some millennial pup, he was sure, in between Instalamb shots of them strumming a guitar.

For someone who had spent the majority of his life on a street-side sojourn away from technology? They might as well have left the buttons blank.

And it was no use turning to the instruction manual for help; the reason it fit on a single card was because they had eschewed using words entirely, and had simply reprinted the symbols and connected them to a diagram of the machine via tiny lines.  The instruction manual had no instructions.

It was beyond his ability to fathom. And he couldn’t just discard the machine completely, because it had been a present. It was the perfect tempest of unsolvable problems.

Nick stared at his subtle tormentor. With its welter of lights and gauges, it seemed to stare back; two bright red lights in particular gave it a nefarious demeanour. Nick had the acute sensation of being scorned.

“Alright, you,” he muttered. “We don’t like each other. That seems apparent. And there’s not going to be mutual, grudging respect between us, because you are a stupid tin box without intelligence. What’s going to happen is this; you’re going to make coffee, and I’m going to drink it. Savvy? Now…”

Turning it on was within his control. There was a long moment, a wild-west show-down, while the machine heated up, before it _binged_ in recognition that it was ready (just not willing) to perform its duty.

Nick filled a jug with soy milk, and traced his finger over the available options of buttons, hunting out the one to engage the steamer. He narrowed it down to the one that looked like spaghetti being strained -- he presumed the lines denoted steam -- and pushed it, tucking the jug under the spout (the jug, typically, was just a little too small for him to hold comfortably, and necessitated that he extend his pinkie ( _how fancy_ , he thought) to comfortably fit the other two digits around the handle; however, the threat of being burned by the heated metal was ever-present) and smiling as the pump began to make a rhythmic _thwunk._

“I’ve got you this time,” he gloated. In this first engagement with his mortal enemy, he had come out on top. He would rout his opponent this time. “Victory is mine, and to the winner the spoils.”

While the milk began to roil softly, he turned his attention back to the suite of buttons he could choose from; the machine had a built-in grinder, and one of them was responsible for turning the raw ore into refined grounds. His finger hovered over one that had a tiny triangle printed beside it, which might have been right.

“Ok, let’s see if - ouch!”

He cringed when his knuckle brushed the already-hot side of the jug. A warning shot fired across his bow; a reminder that his opponent was not to be underestimated. He bunched his fingers a bit tighter (and extended his pinkie ( _so elegant_ , he mused) a bit further), and gave the button a jab.

The machine made a whirring noise, and the glorious sound of beans being turned to powder began to emanate from somewhere inside.

_Another victory_ , thought Nick with a smile, but his opponent was far from out-manoeuvred. In some version of reality, Nick knew how to select the option to make the grinder switch itself off once it had prepared a shot. But it wasn’t this universe, and now Nick had to manually stop the machine from grinding.

There was a cluster of four buttons off to the side, and Nick figured they were responsible for various ancillary duties; one to check his emails, one to organise a dentist appointment, or whatever else this supposed miracle-worker could do. He picked a suspect for halting the grinder, and pressed it.

There was metallic _ping_ , and the drip tray detached itself, clattering onto the floor.

Nick stared down at it, and it returned the stare with forlorn abandonment. There was no going back for it. It was the first casualty of the war.

He tried button number two and the grinder dropped in pitch as it spooled down and finally went quiet. A sigh of relief from Nick at that; at least he wouldn’t die gasping for breath at the bottom of a sea of coffee grounds.

The milk was nearly frothed now, and Nick turned his attention to the production of a sufficiently strong shot. He suspected that triple-strength was the highest it would go. How disappointing.

Nick’s finger hovered above one button next to an icon of…upside-down broccoli? He was almost one-hundred percent certain this was the button to work the percolator.

He was eighty-five percent certain that was right.

He pushed it, and the machine made a cheerful _beep_ and began to cycle through its self-cleaning process.

Nick winced. Twenty percent.

The machine began to spout -- not coffee, but hot water, which streamed into the vacant space where the drip-tray had been. In short order, it was overflowing and cascading down the bench and onto the kitchen floor.

Nick shot a panicked look from that fiasco to the milk jug, which was basically ready, and whose frothy top was nearing closer and closer to the lip. He knew (from hard-won experience) that yanking the jug out while the steam was going was a good way to create a mushroom cloud of scalding milk suds, and he rushed to the task of turning off the spout.

His brow creased in concentration as he picked out the steam button, next to a gauge whose needle was springing from one side to the other, excitedly demanding his attention like a hyperactive kitten. That look turned into a gasp of pain when he stuck his knuckle against the side of the jug again -- hell, the metal was now hotter than the start of the universe. _How did it get so hot!?_ Growling, he jabbed the steam button, turning it off, and went back to the task of stopping the machine from turning his kitchen into a paddling pool.

This turned out to be an impossibility, for he had run out of recognisable buttons, and yelled in frustration at his one remaining option which looked like, for all he could tell, an origami swan. The water pouring onto the floor was now touching his foot, and he stepped to the side in escape.

And, in doing so, found the discarded drip-tray, and also discovered that said drip-tray appeared to be made of buttered soap, because with the tiniest application of force it shot out from under him like a roller skate.

Time suddenly turned to treacle. Seconds became minutes. He could see the milk jug tumbling through the air as he went backwards and collided with the ground. Still his eyes were on the jug; it’s trajectory inevitable. And as he watched it, all he could do was wonder at how he had been defeated, so completely, by a tin box.

The milk jug came down on him with a soft _clong_. The milk came rushing out.

Above him, the machine chimed brightly in celebration that the cleaning process was over.

 

\----------

 

At Herd Street Station, Judy waited quietly for Nick, watching the other passengers shuffling by. She wore a bright smile, but she wasn’t feeling one-hundred percent today -- a midnight dream about being crushed by a giant carrot had woken her up, and she’d been denied a return to peaceful rest. She was at seventy percent, maybe.

Nothing she couldn’t handle, of course, but she certainly wished she’d had the time and presence of mind to make coffee this morning. For a moment, she envied Nick and his new espresso machine -- she had no doubt it was why he was running a little late today, as he savoured a home-made latte, maybe with a splash of hazelnut syrup, damn him -- and she wondered that she should probably buy one herself. There was room in her apartment, she was certain. Under the microwave, perhaps.

She was just beginning to worry that Nick’s savouring was going to make him miss their morning train, when she spotted him approaching at the end of the platform. She beamed at him -- ninety percent, now -- and bounced over to greet him.

“Good morning, Slick!” she said, coming to a stop in front of him. “I was worried you might be a no-show. Caught a runny snout or something.”

“No, no,” he muttered, managing a smile. “Just a little slow this morning. I didn’t have a great night’s sleep. You know how us nocturnal mammals can be.”

She was about to ask him if the espresso machine was helping with that, when she noticed something, and her eyebrow arched in confusion.

“Nick, you know you have your uniform on inside-out, right?”

Nick glanced down, in apparent surprise.

“Huh, would you look at that? I was so dopey this morning I couldn’t even dress properly. Well, I’ll fix that when we get down to the station, I suppose.”

Judy stared at him. At those features, perfectly arranged into a calculated look of buffoonish ignorance.

“Really? So…that stain all over your chest and shoulders has nothing to do with it?”

Nick glanced down at the dark wet patch she was referring to. Glanced back.

“There is a long and tedious story about that, and our train is coming,” he said, pointing behind him to the just-arriving 8:12 express. “If you really want to hear it, it’s going to have to wait. By the way, do we have time to stop for coffee before our briefing?”

“You want to stop for coffee?” she asked. “Doesn’t that negate the idea of having a machine at home?”

“I guess it does,” Nick conceded. “But you have no such labour-saving convenience in your life, so I figured I’d treat you today.”

She gave him a grin of appreciation, and said, “if we’re quick, we should have time. But since it’s a special occasion, let’s do Angello’s. They’ve got all those delicious syrups.”

“How lavish,” he replied. “Sounds like a great idea.”

“Thanks, partner.”

It didn’t seem pertinent, then, to ask about the band-aids on his fingers.

 

\----------

 

The next day, Nick slid out of bed looking infinitely more composed; Saturday mornings were a far less bitter pill to swallow.

For one, he was up at an appropriate hour. He was also looking forward to their plans today; Judy had invited him to accompany her on a quest to find an espresso machine that would fit in the atomic-width of space she had spare in her apartment, and they’d probably follow that with a pleasant alfresco lunch somewhere. He didn’t exactly need to go shopping again, though. He’d already been.

He wandered into his kitchen, and looked at his nemesis again.

Well, at least he had a beautiful enemy. All elegant curves. Refined design. Subtle. Sophisticated.

It was a perfect stand for his new plunger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This piece was essentially a post-OSAS shout-out to all the little tips, suggestions and other wittering populating the comment threads, as well as my little contribution to what our beloved duo's home-lives might look like. 
> 
> It was fun to really torture the punctuation for once. I feel that going a bit wild, nesting parentheses within parentheses and such, best suits a comedic work. I'm on less familiar ground there; comedy writing is not my mainstay, and I can't remember the last time a read a book that made me laugh aloud instead of shriveling my soul. Catch-22, I guess; then again, that contains the memorable moment where Yossarian tries to help a wounded comrade, whose organs promptly slither out and land in Yossarian's lap. Haha, laughs all around.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! The next one won't be far behind. I think it's time I had a go at writing a hi-octane police chase...


	6. It's Magic

“Alright then, it’s settled,” Judy said, leaping up onto her chair so she could see the entire table. “Six cups, bounces allowed, contact doesn’t count. Loser has to clean the break-room fridge...without gloves”

“You’re on,” said Nick, taking his place at the other end.

So, they had arrived at _that_ part of the night. What had begun innocuously as a group of colleagues drinking at the ZPD’s local favourite had preceded, with the inevitability of a universal law, to some bet or challenge on which rode the participants' honour; in this instance, Nick’s limitless braggadocio about his physical prowess had pushed Judy over the edge, and she’d challenged him to a round of beer pong to settle the debate.

This presented Nick with a couple of problems. For one, he had never played the game in his life, and two, the ZPD breakroom fridge was utterly disgusting, a reliquary of forgotten leftover dinners carpeted in a blanket of encroaching mould. And no common mildew, either; it was some mutant strain, the colour of rust with dashes of blue and vibrant orange, and was almost certainly beyond the identification of modern science. Clawhauser had once, on a dare, put his head in that fridge and taken a deep breath, and he’d spent the rest of the day recovering in the corner, alternately hallucinating and vomiting. Cleaning that fridge was a death sentence.

Yet Nick, somehow, was unperturbed. It was just throwing a ball in a cup, right? An easy skill to master. Not to mention he always had a trick up his sleeve should things get tough.

Their fellow officers, however, did not share Nick’s easy confidence, and had gathered around the table to shout encouragement at Judy and wonder aloud what sort of medical attention Nick would need once he was done scrubbing that biological disaster zone.

“You know, us recruits played this a lot in the Academy,” Judy said, rolling her shoulder as if she were warming up to pitch at home plate. “I got pretty good at it.”

“That so, huh?” Nick said, loosening his tie. “Well, I have a degree with honours from the prestigious University of Better at Everything than You. I’m not scared. How about ladies first?”

“How kind of you,” Judy said through a smile. “You’ll live to regret that.”

She took the briefest moment to judge the distance, and then let fly. The ball vanished into the mouth of Nick’s foremost cup, landing with a soft _plop_ on the cushion of beer inside. It didn’t so much as touch the sides.

The collective spectators sucked in an impressed breath, and then turned to see how Nick would reply. Nick plucked the ball from the cup and drank it in a single swallow. Then, smirking confidently, Nick raised the ball, aimed through one closed eye, and tossed it. It bounced off the lip of one of Judy’s cups, arced through the air, and ended up in Clawhauser’s mimosa.

“That doesn’t count,” Clawhauser said, fishing the errant shot out of his fluted glass.

Nick looked at him, and then glance back to Judy, whose mocking smile was oozing smug conceit.

“This might be harder than I thought,” he muttered.

The next two rounds proceeded much as the first; Judy landed her shots with surgical precision, and Nick’s ball ended up basically everywhere Judy’s cups weren’t, including a second visit to Clawhauser’s drink. When Judy’s fourth throw was likewise a perfect entry, he downed his beer and gave her an irritable stare.

“You cheated,” he accused. “Challenging me to the one thing you’re good at. It lacks honour.”

“It’s called a hustle, sweetheart,” she crooned, and the spectators burst into raucous cheers.

Nick’s brow furrowed, and he looked to be on the verge of bearing his fangs…

…And then he just smiled. Smiled like he didn’t have a care to speak of, as if the world was a place made perfectly to suit him. Judy saw it.

“What?” she demanded.

“What?”

“You just went from furious to medicated in two seconds. What’s that smile for? I’m beating the pants off you. What are you planning?”

“Nothing. Take your next shot.”

Hesitantly, Judy raised her arm and threw. Her ball rattled around the rim of Nick’s fifth drink before coming to a rest at the bottom. Nick clucked his tongue.

“Getting nervous, are we?”

“Hardly,” Judy said, eyeing the fox carefully. “Take your shot.”

Nick downed his beer, and then, under Judy’s squint-eyed scrutiny, returned the throw. His shot went so wide that it lodged in Rhinowitz’s nostril, who rolled his eyes and fired the ball back into play with a piteous snort. Clawhauser breathed a sigh of relief, and uncovered his drink with his paw.

“Look’s like you’re the better player, then,” Nick said with a shrug. “Congratulations. Take your winning shot.”

Judy was still staring at him unblinking, puzzling at what machinations were taking shape in Nick’s brain. She could only guess that he was trying to put her off, trying to rattle her aim, so she steadied her breath, summoned her calm, and threw her final ball. It spun through the air, tracing a perfect trajectory towards Nick’s last drink. The competition was over.

And then, a shaved second before the ball fell into Nick’s cup, his paw lashed out and snatched the ball out of mid air.

“Hey!” Judy cried, leaning forward onto the table. “What the hell was that?!”

“Oops. Clumsy me,” Nick said. Then, with practiced dexterity, he grabbed three of his empty cups, deposited the ball inside one of them, and slapped them down on the table surface. He began to shuffle the cups around.

“Very funny,” Judy said, her expression deadpan. “Give me back the ball.”

“I’d love to, Carrots, but I seem to have lost it.” He lifted one cup to reveal empty air underneath. “Nope, not in there. What a shame; you can’t win if there’s no ball; unless you know where it got to…”

“You’ve pinched it, you cheat!” Judy cried, levelling a judgemental finger. “It’s under one of those cups!”

“But which one?” Nick said, continuing to cycle the cups around. “Which one could it be? Pick a cup, Judy. Any cup.”

“I’m not playing your stupid game, you sore loser,” Judy seethed, her arms folded.

“That’s alright, I’ll pick for you. Could it be under number…any of them?”

Nick arranged the three cups in a line, and then flicked each over in turn. There wasn’t a ball to be seen.

“Well! It’s not under any of these! Huh. What a headscratcher.”

“There’s no way that counts as a miss for me,” Judy muttered. “You still have to clean the fridge. Now where did you put that ball?”

“I’m just as confused as you, Fluff,” Nick pouted. “If I…wait, what’s that?”

“What’s what?”

Nick walked to her end of the table, coming to a stop when he was within arm’s reach of her.

“That there. Right behind your…”

He reached both paws behind her ears, and came back with -- and it really was beyond the potential of anyone’s imagination to guess at where he’d been keeping them -- six ping pong balls.

There wasn’t a noise from the spectators; not so much as a disbelieving gasp. They defined speechless.

“Well, you do have big ears; plenty of space there to hide things,” Nick said, and when it seemed no response was forthcoming from Judy’s slack jaw, he dropped all the balls into Judy’s cups with a chorus of soft splashes. “Looks like you have six beers to drink, too.”

The stunned silence suddenly erupted into amazed cheers, and then much spirited discussion about whether breaking the rules was permissible when it was to accommodate such impressive prestidigitation. Judy, on the other hand, simply gawped at him, as if he were truly a wizard, as if she had just seen honest magic, and not a grating sleight of paw by some two-bit swindler.

“Where on earth did you hide them all?” she asked.

“Looks like foxes can be pretty good at multiplication, too,” was all Nick said, and Judy couldn’t stop the escape of an amused snort.

“Damned cheating foxes,” she muttered.

“It’s called a hustle, sweetheart.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm suspending my rule about chapters of less than 2000 words so I can write for this line of stories more often -- the other fluff piece I'm drafting has become a sort of untrimmed hedge with various out-of-control tendrils of theme and plot, and I haven't got the energy to prune it back yet. I'm always looking for fun suggestions or clever ideas that you'd like to see brought to life.
> 
> I am out of here in 5 days. Try not to miss me!


	7. Tactical Response

Nick pressed his back hard up against his cover, ears straining for any hint of the enemy’s position. Rustle of clothing. Hiss of an anxious breath. Faint crunch of paws treading carpet.

There was nothing.

He gripped his weapon tighter, noting the nervous tremble in his fingers. Taking a deep but controlled breath to steady his nerves, he peeked his head carefully around the side of the lounge behind which he was entrenched.

He couldn’t see the entire room from here; he couldn’t see much of anything, really, besides the wall and windows and the plumes of dust particles stirred by the ceiling fan, tumbling like minuscule snowflakes in the slats of afternoon sunlight. Somewhere, a fly buzzed and then silenced on landing. A pendulum clock ticked rhythmically, portentous, as if heralding the approach of some dread inevitability -- a countdown to a threat on which the antagonist would surely make good. There was no sign of his target.

Nick pulled his head back into cover. Somewhere in that room, his opponent was hopping fervently for his demise, and worse, had the skill to make it happen. If he gave away his location, he’d be done for, and he wasn’t expecting second chances; it was strike first, or strike out.

Thankfully, his training came back to him, like an instructor whispering in his ear. Page 23 of the Guide to Law Enforcement. Tactical Response. Be prepared. Secure all equipment before you enter -- no loose straps or buckles. Be aware of all entry and exit points. Other subheadings, more operational jargon.

And of course, above everything else -- pay attention to the details. An officer can’t respond effectively unless they can anticipate what’s coming.

So, he redoubled his effort; he closed his eyes tightly and concentrated, trying to build a model of the room from sound alone, echolocating like a bat in pitch darkness. Listening for the softest noise. Listening.

Then, he heard it -- a quiet _squeak_. The sound of something softly pressing on the couch cushions.

She was right there.

A shiver ran down Nick’s spine and over his skin, making his fur stand up. Adrenaline began to rush through his blood, and he fought to keep his heartbeat under control. _You can do this, Nick,_ he thought. _She doesn’t know you’re here. You can do this. Anticipate what’s coming. Strike first._ His body began to tense like a jack-in-the-box, all enmeshed gears and tightening springs. He breathed deeply.

Then Nick jumped up like a striking cobra, catching his prey completely by surprise. He saw her tall ears, saw her look of shock, unmistakable in that gaping mouth, those wide, glassy eyes. She was so startled that she barely even moved. She was a sitting duck.

The power, born in the lean muscles of his legs, travelled up through his waist and back and poured into his shoulders where it became a mixture of volatile strength, and fuelled by this potent brew he brought his arms around in a great arc, a golf-swing, a hammer-throw, a hero taking a broadsword to the neck of some legendary behemoth. A deathblow.

Nick hit Judy with his pillow so hard that she was lifted clean off her feet, and in defiance of gravity went sailing across the room, slamming into the far wall.

“Hah!” Nick cried in triumph, the contest firmly settled. He was, without dispute, the more effective pillow fighter. The badge was his to pin on his swollen breast for evermore.

But as he landed semi-sprawling on the couch, made clumsy by his momentous overexertion and momentary elation, he heard no bodily thump to accompany her collision with the wall, no traumatised shriek, no crack of broken plaster

Instead, there was a soft, cartoonish _squeak_.

This provoked a perplexed look from Nick, and then two things occurred:

The first -- he realised that the target he had taken a swing at was not Judy, but one of her legion of stuffed animals, an imposter of comparable size and colour. Its mouth was gaping because it had been stitched so, its eyes glassy because they were glass. He’d been duped.

The second -- his peripheral vision caught a shadowed shape dancing across the top of the couch, rushing straight for him.

“Gotcha!” Judy announced.

She struck him in the head with force that would not embarrass a charging Rhinowitz, catching him just under the chin and turning his vision into scattering stars. The blow knocked him over, pitching all his weight into the couch-back, and the whole thing subsequently tilted sideways. Their footing gone, both Nick and Judy spun upside-down and tumbled away as the couch tipped over, and its wooden architecture, its stiles and framework, all burst inside it like shattered bones, the cushions scattered like blast-zone debris.

The pair of them rolled across the floor until they slammed into a cabinet, whose legs did not survive the assault and promptly snapped off. The whole thing, and the assorted furnishings on its countertop -- a decorative vase, a bowl for storing keys, a framed photo of a smiling Bonnie and Stu -- came down on their heads in a tremendous exclamation of exploding porcelain and glass.

The battlefield fell silent, and then, out of the aftermath, the destroyed furniture and bruising skin, Nick’s voice stated the obvious.

“I don’t think we should pillow-fight inside anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is about the smallest publishable thing I've ever posted, but after a few days of leaving it and returning, treating it like some slow-cooker stew, I decided there just weren't any ingredients I could add without spoiling it. I recommend you have the stew, then, on your coffee-break...that is, have the metaphorical stew...have coffee, and read the story with coffee...you don't have to eat any stew.
> 
> It was a fun little story to write, based on a prompt in a comment field somewhere way back, and because I have a limitless capacity to obsess it had to get turned into a story at some point. It was fun to have a go at a slightly ironic twist on law-enforcement operational procedure, and I might even write some silly, hyper-violent nonsense for Complete Idiocy later if I can't think of an intelligent way to do it twice. No time soon, of course -- my work and personal life became shockingly busy recently, which is why the next chapter of The Hunt is face down trying to breathe water. I'll get there. Thanks for being patient.
> 
> Like and kudos if you want to see more of this stupid fluffy garbage.


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